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AN ADDRESS 



TO THE 



WINDHAM COUNTY 

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 

DELIVERED AT THEIR 

ANNUAL MEETING, 

OCTOBER 2, 1845, 
BY J. D. BRADLEY, ESQ. 









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BRATTLEBORO ; VT. : 
WM. E. RYTHEE, PRINTER. 

MDCCCXLV. 



ADDRESS. 



Perhaps it is difficult to say precisely why i 
is that exhibitions like this we have witness J, 
should afford us so much pleasure. The first and 
obvious reason doubtless is, that all that is beau- 
tiful and perfect of its kind delights us. Had we 
seen them any where in the hands of strangers, 
and seen them separately, each of these speci- 
mens which have been gathered here, would alone 
and for its own sake have given us satisfaction. 
All beauty pleases us ; and, so far as we know, it 
pleases us only. Man alone of all the visible 
creation, is authorized to appreciate and enjoy it. 
He alone of all the creatures on the earth can look 
on beauty of any kind and say this was made for 
me. The very existence then of beauty here on 
earth, is a message of kindness from Him who 
made it. It is to man as if the single tenant of a 
desert island were suddenly to hear a voice con- 
versing with him, or were to see before him a 
friendly letter addressed to himself, and speaking 
to him of his own thoughts and wishes. But away 
with all comparisons, they weaken the simple truth 
itself. Beauty here on earth is the voice of the 
Great Spirit. It calls on man to separate him- 
self in idea from the angels above him and the 
brutes below him, and to come forth and contem- 
plate something made for him alone. It says, 
this have I created for thee and for thee alone. 
No wonder then, that we can look and enjoy. 



I know not how it may be with others, but with 
me there is another reason why I love to look on 
these rival products of a thousand farms — each 
one of them good in itself, is a proof of other good 
— each one of them is measurably a token that 
there is comfort and happiness at the home from 
which it came. These things which we have seen 
have not been produced by accident, and such 
things are not apt to come from the household of 
want or the residence of vice. I like at any rate 
to imagine when I look on the forehead of the 
bull — the proud patriarch of the future herd — that 
I see hanging there not merely the ticket of his 
number in the inventory, but the motto, 'all is 
right on our homestead.' Then again the honest 
ox would seem to chew the cud and consider and 
give me his deliberate and well-matured opinion, 
that his owner is the right sort of man ; a kind 
master, a hearty, whole-souled feeder, and, for a 
biped, one of the best he ever knew. Here too 
is the mild contemplative cow — the picture of be- 
nevolence and content. She too has come here 
for a prize ! But it was no ambition of hers, — it 
was the project of her master and mistress. She 
knows that they are her prize and she is theirs ; 
and she wishes all who doubt it, to just step into 
the dairy room. 

Welcome, then, four-footed friends ! 'fellow 
mortals !' You have each told us something of 
the home you have left among the mountains. 
Our hearts are better for having seen yon ; come 
again next year and bring your families. 

Then again, here are the specimens of house- 
hold arts. What a fireside history is told by ev- 
ery one of them. How each one of them has 
written on it the word 'mother,' 'daughter,' 'sister,. 



or 'wife.' How quick the thoughts fly from them 
to the picture of a blazing hearth, and a winter 
evening. We may well view them with respect, 
for they come here the delegates from a hundred 
homes. 

I like these meetings for the favorable view they 
give not only of the beasts but the men. In all 
other contests there is a mixture of evil ; in all oth- 
er strife there is an alloy of envy. Here all are 
victors — all are happy even in being outdone. 

1 like these meetings because they invite our 
thoughts to the contemplation of the future. And 
how much is included in that same word future, 
as applied to Agriculture. We have a right to 
reason of the future from the past.. We may 
reasonably infer that such things as have hap- 
pened will occur again : and if we look at the 
other arts we shall find all their great movements 
have sprung from the application of their kindred 
sciences. Let us take an instance ; let us go back 
a few centuries and look at a certain light piece of 
steel, which it was found would point to the North 
after being rubbed with another piece of the same 
metal. What has this to do with the discovery 
of America ! Does any one pretend that the des- 
tinies of a continent are swinging on this well- 
balanced toy ? Yet such has been the fact. That 
piece of steel brought Columbus to our shores. It 
was that little trembling guide that enabled him 
to find for himself, and to mark down on parch- 
ment for others,, his precise path across the ocean. 
The waves of the mid Atlantic from the morning 
of their creation had been rolling in silence ; six 
thousand years they had kept their sullen secret 
to themselves. This piece of steel has revealed 
their mystery to all coming ages. That piece of 



6 

steel was the Destiny of this Western World ; it 
has peopled our shores and built our cities ; it has 
created a commerce which has altered the face of 
the earth ; it has made distant nations neighbors 
to each other ; it has given to the paupers of the 
nineteeth century more of the physical comforts 
of life than had England's monarchs in the twelfth. 
And it has done all this, not then cease to be idle 
and to die, but the piece of steel is still at work, 
and now, after three hundred years have passed 
away, as if to remind us of Columbus and that first 
atlantic chart, it still lingers on his track and comes 
again to the West and whispers another of its rev- 
elations in the ear of our countryman, Morse. Mag- 
netism is at this moment maturing one of its re- 
sults, the magnitude of which is as difficult of con- 
ception or calculation as any that have gone before. 
Let us take a more recent instance where sci- 
ence has given a lift, (and it was indeed a lift) in 
the Mechanic world. Let us go back a few years 
and look at a man who is intently gazing at some- 
thing, — It is the lid of a boiling kettle. He is 
wondering that the mere vapor of heated water 
should lift that iron. What care we for his 
thoughts ? What has all this to do with the peo- 
pling the interior of America, or the navigation of 
the Mississippi, the Nile, the Niger, or the Gan- 
ges ? What if there is some little vim in hot 
water, what has that to do with the shores of 
Lakes and Rivers in the untrodden wilderness ? 
Shall Rail Roads exist because pot lids rattle ? 
Yes, my friends, the spirit of the kettle has rival- 
led its brother of the magnet ; it has looked into 
the bowels of the earth and decreed that coal beds 
lying there in its hitherto inaccessible depths shall 
remain so no longer, but shall lift themselves (not 



be lifted, but lift themselves) to the surface among 
men ; it has turned spindles, thrown shuttles, and 
sent forth to naked millions the luxury of cloth- 
ing ; it has invited industry to the margin of every 
lake and river ; it has again moved up continents 
still nearer together, and made ferries across 
oceans : it has unhooked the noble horse from the 
whipple-tree and has called out, string together 
your whole caravan ! load it with the cargo of a 
ship or the provisions of an army 1 for I, the spirit 
of steam can draw it ! 

What is past of Commerce and Manufactures 
is future to Agriculture, for no great division of 
wants or the industry of Man has appealed to sci- 
ence in vain. Like causes will produce like ef- 
fects ; such things as have happened will occur 



again. 



When I speak of the future progress of agricul- 
ture, I am perfectly willing to confess that I ex- 
pect results every way as brilliant as those which 
have been mentioned. But let me not be misun- 
derstood. It is not by any one sudden Millerite 
ascension that Agriculture is to be elevated ; it 
was not so with the Magnet or the Steam Engine. 
They were the growth of centuries and are prob- 
ably destined to grow for centuries to come. It 
is seldom that great advances in human knowl- 
edge are of that sudden kind. Inspiration itself 
was sometimes gradual. The young Jewish 
Prophet, you remember, was three times called 
and three times answered 'here am I.' Shall Ag- 
riculture expect more favor ? What I mean is, 
that Agriculture is now called. Science has al- 
ready been applied with energy to Commerce 
and Manufactures, including the Mechanic arts, 
and the time has now come for the same thing to 



8 

be done in this third and last, and greatest divis- 
ion of human industry. I need not labor to prove 
this. You have heard it, seen it, felt it, that for 
the last twenty -five years Agriculture and Science 
have been calling aloud for each other, and the vo- 
taries of one and of both have seen that these 
twain were hereafter to be one. 

But what is this problem of which we are speak- 
ing — what is expected of Science? What is to 
happen to Agriculture ? Am I sufficiently ex. 
plicit ; if not, it is easy to become so. 

Let us take for example a field of that noblest 
of all plants, Indian Corn. Who is there that 
has not looked on such a field — admired it as a 
whole, and on closer scrutiny found some one stem 
or cluster of stalks with its treble and quadruple 
burthen? Such a person has the problem before 
him. Let science tell me all the causes which 
makes that plant to differ from its fellows, and the 
problem, so far as one variety is concerned,, is 
solved. Let me know all those causes and know 
them accurately and thoroughly, and I will have 
a field of maize like that one hill. Give my neigh- 
bors the same knowledge and their fields shall be 
like mine. This is a simple question ; and just 
such questions can be put about all the other pro- 
ducts of the earth. But there is work to be done 
before the answers can be given. Slowly, stead- 
ily, but I believe surely, these answers will be 
given. The responses, indeed, are already com- 
ing, and the younger portion of this audience 
will a few years hence give a far better account 
of this matter than we can give to-day. 

But if silence has heretofore been silent, why 
expect her to speak now ? Why expect from the 
future more than we have received from the past ?. 



9 

I answer that the tools have not been ready. 
The implements with which science will work 
have been in progress of preparation. This is an 
entertainment to which chemistry was invited. 
The world has been waiting till she took her seat 
among the sciences. Chemistry, without whose 
help the problem of the cornfield never could be 
solved, and by whose assistance that same ques- 
tion will be answered, has but yesterday come 
among us, — but she is now here. Chemistry, 
since she left the dark and secret chambers of her 
parent alchemy, has given to the world such a 
series of brilliant wonders as it never saw before. 
What corner of the useful arts is not marked by 
the touch of her hand ? 

What region of the earth is not full of her la- 
bor ? But Chemistry herself, brilliant as she is, 
must be allowed to do things in her own order ; 
and the votaries of medicine and agriculture have 
clearly seen, and sighed when they saw it, that 
their turn was destined to be last. In other words, 
that animal and vegetable chemistry would re- 
quire of the science the maturity of her strength, 
and the arms and munitions taken in many a 
precious victory. 

The reason of this is, that a new difficulty here 
presents itself; whether in medicine or agricul- 
ture, whether dealing with plants or animals, there 
is present at your experiment a new and inscru- 
table agent, the principle of life. Something you 
cannot see, touch or define ; a spirit that laughs 
at crucibles and retorts, and mocks at your analy- 
sis. When asked what life is, we can indeed 
cover our ignorance up in words — we can christen 
it anew, and those who wish to amuse themselves 
are at liberty to do so. They may tell us learn- 



10 

edly that life is the faculty of assimilating other 
matter, but they have only spoken of one of the 
properties or effects of life. Suppose we were to 
describe a horse in this manner to a person who 
never saw one, and should tell him that a horse 
was a capacity for assimilating oats, what idea of 
the animal would the hearer acquire ? It is both 
more honest and more wise to admit at once that 
life is the mystery of mysteries, and that we can- 
not fathom it. I am willing to go still further and 
own that I have no expectation that it ever will 
be fathomed. Perhaps there is no train of reasoning 
that will prove it to be so, but there is a kind of 
consciousness within us that whispers that we are 
destined never to know in this world, what life is. 

But although it is natural that this check should 
both in medicine and agriculture have rendered 
the chemist cautious and slow, should have induc- 
him to postpone what he would otherwise have 
hastened, it is far from having cause for despair. 
We cannot, indeed, understand what life is, but 
we can know, and the chemists promise us we 
shall know, the precise nature of those things 
which help or hurt life. To this compromise of 
the matter the world have consented, and the 
chemists are accordingly at work. 

And it is a work full of promise, full of hope. 
Columbus sailed forth, followed by pity for his 
madness, or contempt for his folly. Agricultural 
Chemistry is cheered onward by the wants and 
the blessings of a toiling world. Columbus launch- 
ed forward into a dark and stormy abyss, peopled 
only with superstitious terrors. These Chemists 
have their own high goal in sight, and every step 
of their progress receives its full instalment of 
gratitude and praise. 



11 

But it is not chemistry alone that is to have an 
agency in this regeneration of agriculture. There 
is a minute knowledge of all plants to be perfect- 
ed. There is the natural history of all animals, 
including the myriads of insects, yet to be studied, 
and for this purpose there must be not merely 
such an investigation as will satisfy the naturalist 
that his classification is correct, that his wheat 
weevil for instance is put in the right compartment 
of his cabinet, or the right chapter of his book. 
Before this work is finished every suspicious in- 
sect must be tried as a vagrant ; he must be forced 
to tell how he gets his living ; and if his habits 
are vicious a police of spies must watch for his 
unguarded moments. 

I invite, then, the practical farmer to be the 
friend of science. He can well afford to be so, 
for he has the right to look to it as the power 
which is destined to elevate his calling to the very 
first rank among human occupations. Instead of 
being moved by a sneer at 'book farming/ instead 
of fearing that science will call on him for experi- 
ment and expenditure, let him remember that sci- 
ence enables him to be more practical to try few- 
er experiments. It is the very province of sci- 
ence to separate knowledge from guess-work. To 
draw the boundary line between what is known 
and what is unknown. This boundary I admit is 
not stationary. It is not a Chinesewall ; it is 
rather like the limit of our own West, mov- 
ing onward. Time honored errors are falling 
like the venerable forest trees before the axe of 
the emigrant, and there is sunshine fertility and 
happiness where they stood. 

Let no one suppose that we are looking for- 



12 

ward too far, or expecting too much. When cen- 
turies of industrious research shall have passed 
away, this work will be advancing. Ten thou- 
sand such centuries would only find it still in pro- 
gress. We cannot indeed be perfect, but we may 
forever advance towards perfection. There is 
room enough, between the finite and infinite, be- 
tween man and God for a never ending yet never 
disappointed effort to advance towards him. Sir 
Isaac Newton spoke of himself as a a child picking 
up pebbles on the shore of the Ocean of knowl- 
edge;" and it is true, and always will be true of 
man. That ocean we cannot cross, for it is end- 
less ; its lowest depths we cannot see, for it is 
bottomless ; but its tides have receded, and will 
again before him who shall walk calmly and bold- 
ly in : he shall visit unhurt what were once its 
darkest caverns, examine the " thousand fearful 
wrecks " of others and find 

" Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 
" Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels 
" All scattered in the bottom cf the sea. *' 









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